Readers!

Lots of stuff is going to go down in price – it has to. The current prices are predicated a lot on guessing and the stuff that’s getting reprinted is going to really tank, there’s no way Assassin’s Trophy can maintain $63 or whatever it’s at right now ($25 Market price, which seems OK for now) and bulk rares are pre-selling for $2 because of course they are.

I haven’t done this before, but given the lack of EDHREC data and my total lack of enthusiasm for any of these commanders as build-arounds with the exception of like, Lazav, whose picks I already talked about, I have to do something worthwhile this week, so why not a guide for the prerelease weekend? If you go to the LGS, and you should, it’s an opportunity to grab the new cards before anyone else has them. It’s also a chance to think about which bulk rares are going to be a dime soon so you can try to get something out of them. An ideal scenario? Trading bulk rares out at $2 toward some future EDH staples. If you got rid of Aethersquall Ancient at $2 and picked up Panharmonicon at $2 on prerelease weekend, you look like a genius today.

Today Ancient is a bulk rare worth a thin dime and Panharmonicon is at $3 and climbing.

How can we try and set up trades like that? Thinking about what’s going where and going into the weekend forewarned and therefore forearmed. I mean forearmed in the sense that you’re armed with knowledge ahead of time, not in these sense that you, you know, have forearms. You don’t need forearms to make good trades, that’s ridiculous and ableist. You don’t need forearms to be forearmed. OK, I’m done. Let’s look at cards.

Inspiration

Last night we did the Brainstorm Brewery set review and if you read my articles but don’t listen to the free podcast where Corbin Hosler and Douglas Johnson and I give you free finance advice every week, that’s an option and you should take advantage of it for free. You clearly value my opinion.

Anyway, we always spend like 20 minutes talking about a $25 planeswalker that sucks and is only expensive because Jace the Mind Sculptor fooled everyone and we haven’t forgotten it all these years later. Instead of that noise, we decided to sort TCG Player by best selling rather than most expensive and it was a much better experience. Looking at best selling cards before the prerelease can help you predict what will get played in Standard and what will likely stay a bulk rare. After that experience, here are a few things I gathered based entirely on that metric alone.

Boros is Popular

The top cards are all Boros cards. It has no implications for EDH whatsoever – Tajic and Aurelia are complete trash as commanders and the only real assets they get are Deafening Clarion, Response//Resurgence and Boros Locket, a card I fully expect will see play. Foil Lockets are like $0.50 right now and I think any that see play could end up a buck or two, but I don’t know how juicy a target that is. I don’t like any of the other 9 lockets for EDH, but Boros could get there considering Boros decks play cards like Dreamstone Hedron which is way more awkward. Boros is going to run roughshod over Standard, though, so I expect those cards to be popular the first few weeks. I think, ironically, it may be Chainwhirler, a card that will be excellent in Boros decks, that could nip the deck in the bud before it’s a thing. Still, Boros staples will go out 4 at a time, are very cheap and will be highly sought.

Ferocidon last year demonstrated that $2 becomes $6 quickly if the deck takes off.

What I like from Boros – Tajic around $3, Vindicator around $1.50, Warboss around $3, but get out quickly.

For EDH, I like Response//Resurgence long-term and that’s about it. Maybe foil Cluestone. I don’t really like much else from Boros. I think the deck is likely to be a thing in Standard early since aggro sorts itself out first so I might try and pick up stuff like Tajic to flip in a week or two, but for the less nimble, see what EDH players like and trade straight across for stuff that won’t hold value as much. Don’t be afraid to trade stuff like Deafening Clarion for EDH cards from sets about to rotate now at their floor.

Lantern could hit $2-$3

This card tends to shrug off reprints and while this will give us way more copies than normal, this is likely a $7-$9 card in as little as a year and you’re going to feel like such a chump if you don’t pick up every single loose copy at your LGS. I think a 1-2 punch of reprint followed by another reprint is possible and they’ve done it in the past but it seems rather unlikely here. I think we can expect a year of growth and if these hit like $2, scoop em all. I would trade a $3 card that will be $0.75 in a month for a $3 lantern that will be $5 in 6 months. Just grab these.

Knight of Autumn may be the best card in the set

And Knight certainly goes up from like $4. It’s a $30 foil right now but it likely goes way down at peak supply. I don’t know how much I care about foils, but this card is a multi-format allstar. If it’s still $4 on Friday night, gobble as many copies as you can. Almost any pile worth $4 you trade toward a Knight of Autumn will look like a joke in 3 months when Knight is $10 and we all wonder how we missed it.

Mission Briefing is way overrated

I’m reminded of Pain Seer here. Remember how Pain Seer was the next Dark Confidant in Standard? This is the next Snapcaster Mage. Exceeeeept not. I’m getting out of every copy of these at $8-$10 immediately and trading for stacks of relevant cards. This is a trap, get out while you can.

Shocks are not cheap enough yet

I’m avoiding these. They are a great deal cheaper than they were a month ago but we haven’t come close to peak supply. I say out any you crack at full value and then buy back in for cash later.

Take a Crazy Risk

I don’t have any reason for thinking I’ll be glad later that I picked up Dream Eater at $3 but I’m going to do it. Remember, in 3 years when Dream Eater is sitting in my box of shame and some EDH precon makes a card that turns Dream Eater into a $15 card overnight and I can pay for a year of car insurance with a busted spec, I’ll repeat the mantra “there are no misses, only longer term specs.” I have been so analytical in my pickups lately that I forgot what it was like to gamble, and if I’m picking up Dream Eater with money I got buylisting a million Lorwyn block tokens or something silly like that, I’m playing with the house’s money and every hit is pure gravy.

Rares are too Cheap

With one exception, rares are too cheap. The mythics in the set are not super likely to impact Standard as much as the rares with few exceptions and that means there are a bunch of $6 mythics that shouldn’t be and a bunch of $1 rares that shouldn’t be. I think it will shake out differently. I think the following mythics go down.

Arclight Phoenix

Aurelia

Chance for Glory

Divine Visitation (but this card is nutty in EDH)

Doom Whisperer (but I bet this is the most expensive mythic)

Dream Eater

Lazav

March of the Multitudes

Mnemonic Betrayal

Nullhide Ferox

Ral(s)

Underrealm Lich

Vraska(s)

Accordingly, I think the following rares go up to pick up some slack

Chromatic Lantern

Citywide Bust

Deafening Clarion

Guildmage’s Forum (?)

Ionize

Legion Warboss

Quasiduplicate

Response//Resurgence

Thief of Sanity (?)

Venerated Loxodon

A lot of those are iffy and rely on a deck coming along to use them, but I would look to get out of inflated mythics, especially marquee stuff like the Planeswalkers as soon as you open it.

One major caveat is that there are 5 shocklands that will be soaking up a ton of value, and with MODO redemption being less of a factor to enforce box MSRP and with a glut of cheap boxes on Amazon, we could see a lot of good, $1 rares. It could take years for even cards with a lot of EDH demand on top of Standard playability to exceed $5. I’m not sure whether that will happen, but let’s be ready.

Here are a few EDH cards I like as a player and whether or not I like the price.

At under $1 for foils, this seems like a meme card and meme cards are collectible. It should be easy to get foils of this for cheap and watch them end up like $4 later because, lol, snugglyboi snuggled u over teh gardrayl lolzz >< so kawai!!!!!!!!11 yatta!

At under $1 for the foils of this as well, I think this is a steal. It’s the best Ravenous Rats variant ever created because it hits them and not you for the exact same stats as Ravenous Rats and for whatever reason, no one is talking about that. Grab these out of draft chaff because discard rats are always a pick until they’re printed 200 times. Chittering Rats are $1 retail and they sell a playset at a time and I get them in bulk for 4 tenths of a cent all day. Chittering Rats is also a $6 foil. It will take years for this to be a $5 foil, if ever, but this is bound to be a bulk foil at first and it shouldn’t be.

This isn’t Fatal Push, but this is a card that will be in draft chaff for free the first week or so and shouldn’t be. It’s a $7 presale foil which means some people have caught on. I think if there is a Selesnya deck, and there better be, convoking is a real factor in the deck and this is a great thing to convoke for. Tapping Emmara to make a dork while you kill a blocker is what Convoke is all about. People won’t know this is a $7 foil when you booster draft the set so get with people after the draft and get these for whatever they think is fair.

This isn’t as good as Return to Dust but you can do it as an instant and that means people will want to try it out. I don’t hate the single white, either. This is a $1 foil which I think has little downside and lots of potential upside at that price.

This was the EDHREC preview card so I have had more time to evaluate this card than the rest of the set. It’s not fair to call Discovery a Ponder since it’s 2 mana which is way more than 1 mana, but we also don’t have Ponder. This isn’t really a worse Ponder anyway, it’s a better Forbidden Alchemy that is way better drawn late since it has an excellent late-game mode. This is low downside and it’s getting buzz. Every Surveil card will get looked at because the mechanic is probably too good and probably a mistake.

I have to imagine this tanks from $8 but this is a nutso EDH card and basically any token deck runs this. Watch this price like a hawk and when it bottoms out and begins to rebound, be about it.

I think the Selesnya deck is going to be bad because of Chainwhirler. I also think people are going to try it and/or they may ban the Whirler. If Chainwhirler gets banned, I think this has a lot of upside but in a whirly world, this is really bad unless you get the Loxodon to buff your creatures. There’s no point not just playing a Tajic deck until then.

This may be a way to beat Chainwhirler. You play a bit behind the curve but that lets you let them dump their greedy-ass Red player hand, then you play some buff dudes behind curve interspersed with removal, leave them topdecking and then swarm them. If this finds a home, it’s a $4 card, so watch these at bulk.

This is good. Is it too good to be a bulk rare? I don’t know! But I know I like it a lot.

I think this is a fine EDH tutor but I don’t know if a format that has great tutors needs a fine one. I do know I personally like it in 75% builds and advocated for it accordingly but that’s narrow. This is better earlier in the game than you think.

This is as liable to make a bunch of other cards go up in price as are any of the boring commanders in this set.

This is a really good card, but I don’t know if there is too much red removal for you to lean into it. It doesn’t block and by the time you slam this, they have a Warboss and a few gobbos attacking for 6. I hope this ends up a card.

Lol. I don’t know how long the foil stays $30 but this is a card I want to open as my guild rare in the worst way.

If there is a Selesnya deck, it will be because this card exists. It’s the only way you beat Chainwhirler, imo and it’s currently a bulk rare.

That’s all I think I want people to know. This is a good set so play as many prerelease events as you can. I’ll be back with some data-based action next week. Until then, grab those rising stars. Until next time!

I like to try and predict the future and that’s not easy. Predicting the future allows us to buy tomorrow’s expensive cards at today’s cheap prices and if it were easy or obvious, everyone would be doing it already. Some obvious stuff has popped already.

Some (I think) equally obvious stuff that goes in the same deck has not popped yet.

The important thing to know if we’re not just sniping Kittycats like Phyrexian Dreadnought, a card that’s good in a deck that may or may not get built at all, is which decks will actually get built. I can try and rank them in terms of how good I think they are but that’s a little bit tainted by bias and while one man’s “bias” is another man’s “you know more about this than I do, I don’t even play this durdle format and I’m reading an article for your opinion” I think when we can use a stats-based, analytical approach, we should. Is there a way to develop a new statistical metric or find some other numbers-based approach to try and rank the 8 new Legendary creatures spoiled in the last week to try and see if one of them is going to do some more heavy lifting than the rest? Knowing which one to cover first will help me figure out which cards will go the fastest. When I guess, I’m not always right so if we can avoid that, let’s avoid it.

First off, I’m going to rank the 8 new commanders from best to worst based on my opinion just to give us a baseline. I don’t expect to be 100% correct on which commanders will have the most decks built around them, but I expect to be quite close considering this is my only job and I’ve been the only one doing this for a while so I should know what I’m doing.  If I had to guess the ranking of the 8 creatures from most built to least built, here is what I would guess.

1. Lazav
2. Etrata
3. Izoni
4. Emmara
5. Niv-Mizzet
6. Aurelia
7. Trostani
8. Tajic

The other two are Planeswalkers and aren’t eligible to be your commander.

This was actually a little harder to do than I had anticipated. Lazav and Etrata could easily swap positions and Izoni and the rest of the top 3 could swap. The middle few were tougher to rank with Niv-Mizzet being almost exactly like commanders that already exist. Meanwhile Gerry T said Tajic was the best card in the set and I have him after Trostani who goes in every deck Emmara is in, probably but I have her ranked way lower. Both Emmara and Trostani aren’t likely to bump Rhys or other Trostani from their respective dekcs. This is tough. Aurelia may very well be the 4th best – it’s hard to know. Boros goes wide better than it goes tall but if you wanted to build Voltron, she could be good although there are 10 other better Voltron angels.

If you told me to rerank these tomorrow, my ranking probably changes. We need some more data.

Wisdom of the Crowds

One way to rank the buzz concerning these commanders in a world with no EDHREC data yet is to see how many comments are on the reddit posts for each commander. Reddit is a place where people go out of their way to be negative, so it’s possible that the worst ones will get the most comments but since we’re not making any decisions based on this data, but are merely looking at it to see if it tells us anything (and is therefore usable next time out) I say we give it a shot.

I may have done goofed, or maybe not. Tajic was only released today but has a ton of wind at his back with huge numbers in both subs despite only have been posted for 8 hours at the time of publication. Last week I thought Niv-Mizzet was worth his own focus article before the others despite the fact that he is very similar to a few Nivs Mizzet that were published before. I liked it but ranked it lower on my list to due its lack of novelty. I think there’s a chance if it’s the number 1 deck in a few weeks, it could be people updating old lists to reflect a new commander.

I didn’t take into account who spoiled the cards until I had already ranked mine and I think it’s interesting that the four I had ranked at the top were spoiled by heavy hitters in the community or were the PAX exclusive and the other four, it wasn’t clear who spoiled the card. That didn’t influence my vote because I didn’t know who spoiled what since I don’t pay attention to that sort of thing and didn’t even check until I was on reddit tallying scores. If those four don’t end up being the most popular, they’re certainly the 4 that WotC thought would be the most exciting to people hence the content providers they had spoil the cards. If you don’t think there is a pecking order, consider the fact that Tolarian Community College was given Lazav to spoil and when I asked for a card for EDHREC, I was given Discovery//Disperal.

The ranking based on number of upvotes to the post is different, but it’s odd comparing weeks-old cards to Tajic, which is 8 hours old (although how long does anything stay on the front page of the main sub? A day at most). Tajic also benefits from being Standard-playable, as does maybe Lazav and probably Etrata and maybe one or two others. It’s hard to compare apples to oranges like that, but we can try ranking by subreddit.

Clearly I way overvalue Izoni. In fairness, there was no one thread spoiling Izoni in the EDH sub, but 3 deckbuilding threads, the most for any commander. However, it’s possible everyone is less excited than I am. It’s also possible this metric is meaningless.

If you compare what I thought to what the EDH sub thought, I didn’t do too bad. I was a little iffy about a few in the middle, but both the EDH sub and I thought Lazav and Etrata were the most interesting, and that  Niv-Mizzet was less exciting than the main sub did given that he doesn’t create a novel deck archetype but rather just updates an old one and we both liked Tajic less than the main sub.

Am I insane in thinking Izoni is amazing? Sure, lots of Golgari commanders are better and Izoni only benefits from having stuff in the yard and can’t bring things back like they like to do in Golgari, but I think Izoni is going to be in the top 3 built decks of the 8 when EDHREC starts getting in data. If I’m wrong, we’ll know to trust me less and if I’m right, we’ll know that my gut is better at filtering a ton of conflicting factors better than merely ranking raw numbers. There are a lot of possible explanations for the number of comments in the main sub for Niv-Mizzet, for example, considering all of them are dumb memes. No memes for Izoni, a new character, just people trying to build.

This was an interesting exercise and we’ll come back to it when we have data to see how I did. For now, though, you want picks and I guess it’s up to me to give them to you. I am going to assume I know what I’m doing and that reddit buzz means less than my years of experience and give you Izoni picks. There is no EDHREC data, but there may be a few kittycat tier cards that no one is scooping because he isn’t as obvious to non-EDH players as Lazav is. I could do Lazav, but I think the lowest-hanging fruit (Dreadnought) is scooped and the cards that are in the rest of the deck are commons and uncommons like Vector Asp or they won’t come clear until people start to build the deck. I think we have some time on Izoni stuff and maybe I’ll do Lazav next week when we have the full set. Anyway, here we go.

Ugh. It’s been 20 minutes since I typed the paragraph “here we go” and I haven’t found anything all that exciting.

It looks like every deck is a pretty generic “Golgari Goodstuff” deck and Izoni is just a chance to draw some extra cards, trigger Grave Pact, get recast for a bunch of tokens late in the game and generally just… be boring. Boring is fine because what I call boring, other people call “consistent” and they think it’s a good thing and there are more of them than there are of me which would make someone with less self confidence think they’re wrong but I’m NOT wrong, everyone else is wrong, consistent is boring. It’s also boring from a finance perspective because there is no real new tech here. You know which cards are good with Izoni’s ETB ability? Primal Vigor, Doubling Season and Parallel Lives, the cheapest of which is like $15.

Grave Pact, Deathreap Ritual, Fecundity, Beastmaster Ascension, Craterhoof… the deck basically builds itself. Want to get spicy? Add dredge cards. Add Deadebridge Chant. If Izoni hits, you might get 5 or 10% on cards already in tens of thousands of decks. If it doesn’t hit, there weren’t any good targets anyway. Gross.

Then I found my Coolstuff colleague Stephen Johnson had brewed with Izoni already and included this pic at the end.

Fine. Here’s some damn Lazav picks, sheesh.

Necrotic Ooze is to Lazav what Quicksilver Elemental was to Mairsil.

Expect a bigger jump for Ooze since it’s a known entity meaning there aren’t copies lying around in $0.25 boxes. Ooze is already concentrated in dealers’ hands from the last time it popped based on being a combo card. I think Ooze hits $5 minimum and stays there and if you spend $100 on Ooze and don’t double it, I’ll be pretty surprised. That would mean Lazav didn’t hit (like Mairsil didn’t) but it somehow hit less than Mairsil. Quicksilver Elemental wasn’t a kittycat, it was a card only brewers figured out the same as Ooze. I can’t fathom you not making obvious, slam dunk money on Ooze. I will give you all a week to buy copies then I’m buying in – how’s that sound?

Similarly, this is declining a bit and I expect it to perk back up a bit. It’s not as tasty a buy as Ooze, but people will want this card, too. Lazav is going to be pretty similar to a lot of decks from the past and we can already see people putting the pieces together. This is one of the pieces. It’s less useful than Ooze, has a higher buy-in but it’s also on the Reserved List and that means Team Rudy is interested.

Not much to say here. Lots of copies given the number of printings, but they’re around $2. At that price, I prefer Ooze.

There will probably be more picks once we get EDHREC data, but for now, this is my opinion on the non-kitty cats in Lazav decks, a topic you watched me try not to write about then settle for in real time, you lucky so and so’s. Enjoy your triple up on Ooze and use some of your money to pay for Pro Trader access, will ya? Thanks for reading, nerds. Until next time!